This invention relates to storage of digital data, and more particularly to a data storage system that provides access to a remote storage area.
The Internet is a worldwide collection of networks that spans over 100 countries and connects millions of computers. Reports indicate that the Internet is growing faster than all preceding information technologies including radio and television. Remote data storage over the Internet is one of the fastest growing facets of the Internet. Numerous companies provide a wide range of an Internet data storage services for remotely storing and managing data files. Many of these services, however, have limited modes for accessing the data files. For example, many require that a user load proprietary software on his computer in order to communicate data files to the remote storage. Other services only support access via a web browser or similar communication utility.
The present invention is directed to a data storage system and method capable of providing a variety of access methods. In particular, the a system and method in accordance with the present invention can be configured to easily and seamlessly interact with a user""s computer without requiring proprietary software.
As explained in detail below, the system and method can be configured to provide seamless access to a plurality of remote storage areas. Authorized users can access data files from anywhere in the world via a global computer network such as the Internet or a private wide-area network. In one embodiment, access to the virtual storage area is fully integrated with an operating system executing on a client""s computer for seamless access using standard file management routines provided by the operating system. In addition, utilities, such as the Macintosh(copyright) Sherlock(copyright) search tool, can seamlessly search the remote storage areas.
In one embodiment, the data storage system includes a plurality of storage servers coupled to a plurality of storage devices. The storage devices provide a plurality of virtual storage areas, each storage area assigned to a user. According to the invention, the assigned user can seamlessly access the assigned virtual storage area using a client computer communicatively coupled to the storage servers via a global computer network such as the Internet. An operating system executing on the computer includes a set of application programming interface (API) routines for managing local data files. The operating system provides access to the storage areas over the global computer network using the file management API routines provided by the operating system. In order to store data files, the operating system encrypts the data files and communicates the data files to the storage server for storage within the storage area. When the user or a software application requests access to a data file, the operating system issues requests to the storage server to retrieve one or more data files from the storage area.